"The apartment is crammed full of CDs, books, DVDs, toys, Lego, games, several cars, microscooters, and other shiny appliances. A TIGER lolls on a rug."

"Sometimes they talk amongst themselves, sometimes you talk to them, but nothing ever really comes of that. You search carefully, but there are no
doors. No exits or entrances or anything. Just the room."

Clone clone clone. I've been lax. A word from our sponsors in the
Twisted World of Advertising, and what could
easily be the output of the most frustrating text adventure in the world,
Mystery. Fill your brain.

In 1967, sociologist Stanley
Milgram sent packages to a few hundred
people at random, each being labelled with a specified target
recipient - the receivers of the package were asked to forward
it to anyone they knew who was "more likely to know" the target,
and so on until it got there. Surprisingly it took just six steps,
on average.

It's being tried with email,
now, sending a message out to
volunteer victims and seeing how many jumps it'll take from
address book to address book. First impressions are that it's
going to take less steps, electronically, but it really depends
how isolated and obscure the targets are - greater connectivity
seems as likely to tangle the path into loops as to cut it
straight to a destination, after all.

Intriguing stuff. And a very
tempting model for a postal network; "Here, this parcel's for
Algernon Other, a bike-shop owner from Wales. Pass it on to anyone
who's more likely to know him, would you?"